John McClane is back, but unfortunately most of his mojo has disappeared along with his hair. Die Hard 4.0 or Live Free or Die Hard is definitely a bigger and louder movie, but even the cool effects and frantic action could not get McClane back to where he was before with the original Die Hard.Bruce Willis can still kick butt at 52 - and there is nothing wrong with Willi’s performance in Live Free or Die Hard. In many ways I am glad to see John McClane again, brings back memories of the good old 80s. But beyond Willis, there is nothing much going for this movie.

A limp plot pulls the whole movie down. I mean, in this movie the stakes are the highest of the four movies - the future of the nation is at stake, if McClane cannot stop the bad guys, it will be total anarchy. A fire sale where everything must go. There is drama and high tension right there.

But do we really care? The way the story is told through uninspiring characters made it hard for us to care. McClane’s daughter is being held hostage made us care a bit, but not by much. Saving the life of a cool witty hacker dude - Mac’s own Justin Long - maybe we cared a bit more there.

The plot made it hard for us to invest in the characters - I mean in the original Die Hard, when Hans Gruber took over Nakatomi Building, we cared what will happen to the hostages within. We cared for the cop who accidentally stumbled upon the crime and was trying to help out McClane, we even cared for McClane’s somewhat snotty wife. Failing in that Live Free or Die Hard failed as a movie.

Die Hard movies always had great supporting characters - Sgt Al Powell from DH, Capt Captain Lorenzo (by Dennis Franz), Trudeau (Fred Thompson) DH2, they moved the story along, increased the tension. But in Live Free or Die Hard, the writers somehow failed to come up with a good supporting characters. Matt Farrell, Lucy McClane and Mai Linh do add some color, but other than Kevin Smith as a nerdy hacker the other characters were simply limp.

The way FBI, NSA and DHS are portrayed as bumbling idiots and incompetents didn’t help matters either. If they are that stupid then they probably deserve what is happening to them. Heck, even Trudeau (Fred Thompson) in DH2 tried to fight back intelligently - although he was getting outwitted, at least he was trying.

Now for some positives - the action set-pieces are great. The scene where the bad guys try to spoof McClane and Farrell into an ambush and the subsequent chase scene is tense and ends satisfyingly. Then there is another scene where McClane got his ass kicked by Mai Linh - which somehow ended up in an elevator shaft. Then there is a memorable scene where McClane is being chased by a ultra high-tech F-35. There are some funny McClane witticisms, but they are few and far between.

Die Hard is definitely still is the best of the four movies. Die Hard 2 comes close, but Die Hard 3 and Die Hard 4 should not have been made. However it is good to see McClane in action again. So if you have a hankering for a blast from the past and are willing to forgive a few things (bad plot, uninspiring characters), then go see Live Free or Die Hard. Otherwise don’t bother as you will come back disappointed.

Transformers is why we go see movies.

All the hype aside, Transformers brings us back to the good old days of (mostly Spielberg) movies - Goonies, Gremlins, Raiders, Young Sherlock Holmes, ET - all the great movies of the 80s. I must admit that those are the movies that formed my opinion of what movies ought to be and I am happy to see that type of movies return.

Yes, I know Michael Bay directed the movie, but the tone and manner of the movie is all Spielberg. Supposedly Spielberg at one point described the Transformer movie as ‘about a boy and his car’ - and despite all the action and special effects, this is what Transformers is all about. It reminded me of Corvette Summer in many ways.

Transformers has all the elements of a typical Spielberg movie of the 80s - a geeky protagonist with a lot of heart saddled with a dysfunctional family, a not-so-distant relatively that leaves something behind, a hot unattainable chick (seemingly), stupid government types, stupid government types who are funny, lots and lots of action, cool special effects and awesome moments that make you go wow and great moments of laugh-out-loud humor.

Despite the unusual name Shia LaBeouf is the typical Spielberg protagonist and he fit’s right into the movie - starting with him trying to hawk his insane grandfather’s stuff at school to the moment when he is seemingly stalked by his ‘crappy old Camaro.’ to the moment towards the end where he is trapped atop a building with nowhere to run. I look forward to see him in the next Indiana Jones movie.

The movie is filled with memorable characters - from the Special Forces soldiers played by Josh Duhamel & Tyrese Gibson to the ‘hot,’ Megan Fox. She has her moments and helps move the movie along as only a love interest could. Then there are Kevin Dunn & Julie White who play the parents and provide some really funny moments along with Mojo the Chihuahua. Of course we cannot forget John Turturro - who plays the wacky Sector 7 man.

While the characterization of the Autobots and Decepticons are a bit thin, the special effects that animate them are topnotch, believable and just plain awesome to watch. The special effects are one of the most realistic and awe inspiring I have seen in a movie in a while - from way the transformation takes place to the Scorponok (Scorpion) attack in the desert, to the Sector 7 chase of Optimus Prime, to the final showdown in the city-streets.

A bit of a disclaimer; I was never a fan of the original Transformers series. Although I have seen some episodes including the much maligned Beast Wars, I always thought that the idea was great, but the execution was plain cheesy. However, today, after seeing the Michal Bay movie, I am a believer.

So would I recommend it? Well, it goes like this. If you grew up in the 80s with such movies as Goonies, Gremlins, Raiders, Young Sherlock Holmes, ET, and thought they were awesome, go see this. The magic is back.

I think LOST is great, but after going through 3 seasons, these are the things I learned..

1 .The miracle of water. No matter how serious the injury is, whether it is a gun shot wound or being pierced in the lungs with a sharp object or being attacked by a weird black cloud - water can fix it. Every time.

2. If you hoard stuff, keep it a secret. Every do-gooder will want to kick your ass or even worse an ex-Republican Guard will try to torture you to get to your stuff. Of course you just might get a kiss too, but that is only after getting your ass kicked in the first place. To add insult to injury, you still get no respect for a couple of seasons.

3. Don’t have sex on deserted islands with no birth control. You know what sex leads to right? Unless it is with Kate or Sun or Niki or Ana-lucia or Shannon.. er Rose? OK, maybe not Rose.

4. If you are feeling particularly bored, then stop entering the numbers into an old computer. That way you get to see experience some drama and see weird Technicolor effects in the sky. You will, of course, have no idea what you just saw – at least for a couple of seasons.

5. Obsessive people can kill you. They will make you follow them while they try to save their son, they will make you climb up trees to reach a plane that has somehow crashed yet still teetering on top of the branches, they will try to blast open hatches as you try to stop them from opening it. If you find yourself in any of the circumstances, tell them to get lost and go back to your beach hut or shelter and eat some more DHARMA branded food stuff.

6. Eating generic brands like the DHARMA Cereals, DHARMA Beer, DHARMA Ranch Dressing, and Apollo Candy Bars can make you irrational, emotional, prone to flash-backs at the most inconvenient times, and highly susceptible to weird theories of why your plane crashed. Even if one of the producers have said that there is a perfectly scientific reason.. this should be good.

7. If you are easily offended, don’t hang around Sawyer a.k.a James, because if he sees something unusual, he will always say S.O.B (yeah you can figure out what). And if you are close enough you even get to see him do his squinty frown.

8. If you miraculously survive a plane crash and a guy called Desmond starts following you, don’t bother going camping, sailing or diving with him. You are dead already.

9. Don’t join weird cults with names that don’t make sense. Especially if they put bastardized Ying-Yang symbols on everything they own, from buildings to cars to uniforms. Related to this learning is not to trust some oriental doctor who speaks like he grew up in California, yet greets you with an Indian greeting and only appears in black and white films to indoctrinate you.

10. A love Triangle is not complicated enough. Bring one more into it so now you have a love square. Add complexity by having the fourth person lie, cheat and beat up one of the original three.

11. You can make people think you know what you are talking about if you speak in riddles. It’s helpful if you have an unusual look (like no hair or have a reptilian gaze or have a weird name that rhymes with Gecko). That will keep them guessing and coming back for several seasons hoping that at one point you will give them the answers they want. Hah!

12. People are generally stupid (see above) and will accept answers even if they don’t understand it. Although by Season 3, some are getting pissed off, so someone, somewhere better come up with answers. Soon.

Now I know why Spider-Man didn’t follow, the oft abused, convention of putting titles after the movie name. They didn’t need to. 1, 2 and 3 are all part of the story of Peter Parker, Mary Jane and Harry Osborn. Spider-Man 3 brings to end a story arc that began with Spider-Man. It is still about people, relationships and love - not so thinly disguised as an action movie.

The story begins where everything is going perfect for Peter. He is doing well in College, his relationship with MJ is progressing and everyone loves Spider-Man. That lasted for all of 10 or 15 minutes into the movie; then things begin to happen, new friends and foes are introduced and the relationship with MJ begings to unravel.

We are rapidly - for lack of a better word - introduced to Gwen Stacy, Captain Stacy, Eddie Brock and Flint Marko. Of course we are not forgetting the Symbiote either.

Things kick off with a bang when the New Goblin attacks Spidy and what a fight it was - and Spidy ended up being clobbered most of the time by an even more powerful New Goblin. The fight scenes dizzying and most of the time too fast to follow as a lot of things are happening visually. This is true of most of the action scenes in the movie.

Then Peter “discovers” the black suit and things begin to change for him. It is really cool when Peter is in the black suit, he moves around menacingly, he is more powerful and much more aggressive. As the suit amplifies the aggressiveness in Peter, he begins to make mistakes - in his relationship with MJ, in his work and in seeking revenge for the death of Uncle Ben.

In someways this movie is as much about Harry Osborn as much as it it about Peter Parker and Mary Jane. While the New Goblin costume looks somewhat hokey, James Franco played the role really well and at certain points, you cannot help but like him. There is a powerful story here about the conflict between two best friends, however it was overshadowed by the addition of Sandman and to some extent Venom (although that was pretty cool).

The rest of the movie is to show the relationship with MJ going down the tubes, his best-friend is trying to kill him and two of his enemies getting together to get “rid,” of the spider, and we wait to see how Peter figures his way out of it all.

The action scenes are great - Spidy Vs. New Goblin, Spidy Vs. Sandman, Spidy (now in black) Vs. Sandman, Peter (also in black) Vs. Harry and the finale four way showdown. We also got to see Stan Lee, now in a speaking capacity, Bruce Campbell as a French Maître d’ and of course some really hilarious scenes with JJ.

Then there is the long awaited Gwen Stacy. I was a bit concerned that she would just be “tacked on,” but somehow she fits in quite well to both Spidy’s and Peter’s lives. Early in the movie, she gets to kiss Spider-Man in the same way that MJ got to kiss him in Spider-Man, which of course leads to all kinds of trouble for Peter.

There are few quibbles, one is why we need Sandman at all, the story could have worked fine without the character, the other is that the screen time of the awesome black spidy suit is really short, the Venom scenes are equally short as well. What happened was too many new characters, story-lines were introduced and took away the focus from the story.

The ending was a bit unexpected, but made sense in the context. In someways Spider-Man 3 feels like a middle act, I mean Spider-Man is a standalone, but Spider-Man 2 & 3 are almost continuations.

Overall I liked the movie and it is definitely recommended. With the story-arc wrapped up nicely, I hope that Raimi and the studios quit while they are ahead. However a few threads are left dangling (not many, but important ones) so most likely they will proceed with 4.

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